Recycling of metals from waste with thermal plasma

Recovery of platinum group metals from spent catalysts: A review

“…Since 1980s, plasma arc smelting technology was used in recovery of PGMs from spent auto-exhaust catalyst (Mishra and Reddy, 1986;Saville, 1985;Zhao, 1998). High energy density, high temperatures and flexibility in the plasma gases employed are basic advantage of plasma arc smelting (Burkhard et al, 1994). In plasma arc smelting, crushed spent auto-exhaust catalyst mixing with iron ore (or metallic iron powder), reductant and fluxes were smelted in a plasma arc furnace at a temperature of ~2000℃.…”

Thermal plasma technology for the treatment of wastes: A critical review

“…Metals such as zinc and lead can be collected as a melt or condensed from the vapor phase. The high temperature of the plasma also allows vitrification of the residuals after the recycling step [52].…”

Thermal plasma technology: The prospective future in material processing

“…The second type of plasma is cold plasma characterized by low energy density and large difference between electron and heavy particle temperature (T e ≥ T h ) [8][9]. Typical examples are in glow discharges, low pressure RF discharges and corona discharges.…”

“…The more conventional applications of thermal plasma technology cover nowadays on wide spectrum of applications on materials processing. Theses application of thermal plasma technology may be classified as thermal plasma in cleaning technology such as waste destruction, in particular toxic waste materials [9] , coating techniques such as including plasma spraying, plasma chemical vapor deposition (CVD) , thermal plasma in metallurgy [10] , thermal plasma synthesis of fine/ nano powders [11] and thermal plasma in extractive metallurgy, including recovery of metal values in industrial application [12]. As conventional plasma torches employ argon and nitrogen as plasma gases.…”